Darin was not born into slavery, but he could not remember life before it. My Master once estimated that he could have been no more than two or three when raiders took him - and perhaps his family, although he had no recollection of anyone who might have been related to him - from his home, and sold him in the slave markets of Karandistahn.

Darin's purchaser was Anano, an immigrant from the desert oasis city Alanis and the owner of an extremely well-to-do brothel. (It is possible, but unverified, that Anano may actually have purchased Darin's mother, receiving him into the bargain. If this is the case, she either died, was separately sold again, or lost all maternal interest in her son before he was old enough to remember her.)

Anano was not a harsh taskmaster. Darin was seven or eight years old when Anano made him a charge of the stablemaster, and he began to learn to care for horses. He lived as a stableboy for about seven years. By all accounts, he was a model slave: He never attempted to run away, rarely displayed any hints of rebellion, and did his work quickly and efficiently.

Anano's brothel owed its success in part to the fact that Anano kept only women and men who enjoyed the work. When I was in my fifteenth year, my Master decided for a number of reasons (some of which I question now - but at the time I would have cheerfully cut off my arm at my Master's word) to sell my bond to Anano for the space of a year. This was not an unusal occurence in Karandistahn - many owners would use this arrangement to train pleasure-slaves. In exchange for the training, the brothel owner paid a much lower fee for the bond than might otherwise have been charged. Anano rarely accepted such terms, but he was hardly going to refuse one of the Chained.

This was the first time in more than ten years that I had been separated from my Master for more than a few hours, and I was devastated by it. I accepted the training Anano (or more precisely, Anano's prostitutes) gave me, but for the first month spent my nights in my small room weeping for the loss of my Master's presence.

Darin happened to witness me crying one night and felt sorry for me. I was never quite certain how he managed it, but he snuck into my room and carried me away in an attempt to free me. All I remember is waking in Anano's barn with Darin staring at me, and calling my Master in panic.

My Master was amused more than angered by the incident, and he agreed to hide the incident from Anano. It was something of a private joke between Darin and myself, and when our schedules permitted we began to develop a sort of friendship. When my year was over, my Master purchased Darin from Anano (subsequently setting him free) and brought him with us to Alanis.

In Alanis, my Master sponsored Darin into the Thieves' Guild. His cover work was as an apprentice to a horse-seller, and it was in this capacity that he met Kevil Talarin. The two swiftly became fast friends, and when Kevil expressed a desire to meet my Master, Darin readily agreed, introducing him to the both of us.

Not quite a year later, during Alanis' midsummer festival, Kevil's sister Aylin was kidnapped by the desert raiders who were a constant plague. He came to Darin and myself for assistance, and I saw then what a year of training and study had done for him. He moved like a shadow, and nearly as quietly. He tracked the raiders across the desert for half the night, and fought like a dervish when we engaged them in combat. I was a little surprised at the callousness he displayed picking over the bodies afterward, but he assured me if he had not, his masters at the Thieves' Guild would be quite upset.

Darin was nearly devastated by Aylin's fever relapse and subsequent death. As well as being Kevil's dear friend, he had been quite fond of her personally. For the first time in my life, I felt a yearning to stay when my Master and I left Alanis shortly after her funeral - my two only true friends were there, and they were both in pain.

I did not see them again for nearly a year. But when a rogue illithid managed to kill my Master, I went back to Alanis to seek their help, which they both readily promised. After some months on the road, I belatedly realized that they were not competing for my affections (as it had sometimes seemed) but cooperating, their feelings for me equalled only by their feelings for each other.

It was a revelation that perplexed me somewhat - although I knew Darin for a bisexual, Kevil had never before to my knowledge expressed any desire for other men. (If the revelation had perplexed me, it had outright poleaxed Kevil. He never attempted to deny his feelings for Darin, but neither did he ever understand them, either.) In any case, their obvious love for each other - and their equally obvious feeling for me - eventually won me over, and we became what is known in Alanis as a circle, though an unofficial one, since we never found time to declare ourselves officially.

About a year after we joined in circle, we realized we had developed what is known in Alanis as a "Vala" bond - simply described, a link that joined us in such a way as to allow us to feed each other our own life energies. This assisted us greatly in our search, as any of our individual abilities could be boosted with assistance from the others.

Five years after my Master's death, we finally found once more the illithid who had killed him. Small wonder it had taken so long: it was a spelljammer, a thing unknown on my world. The illithid's practice was to come to Gaena once every six to nine months to collect slaves. It was enormously powerful, and we caught up to it just as it was about to depart. All of my resources - and many of Kevil's and Darin's - were exhausted in preventing the ship from taking off.

When I finally managed to ground the ship, what I later learned was black powder stored in the hold caught fire, causing pieces of the ship to explode outward in a devastating rain of shrapnel. I could not summon enough magical energy in time to put up a shield, and Kevil and I both were wounded as we dove to the ground.

Darin was struck full in the chest by a large piece of the debris, and died instantly.

Farewell, Darin Silkfingers: Friend and lover; trader and thief. I hold you in my Memory.